That’s why the playoffs are expanding. It might still end up all SEC but other teams will have a shot. Texas has had a financial advantage over the big 12 forever and they haven’t done much with it.
Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
- Thread starter ISUcyclones11
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Fox and ESPN haven’t forced a conference to do anything they haven’t wanted to do. Grabbing OUT is a move every single conference would have made. There already isn’t competitive balance but as long as their is the opportunity to get into the playoff anything could happen, kinda like March Maddness.
https://saturdayblitz.com/2022/08/22/big-ten-sec-football-expand-start-own-league/ Call it click bait if you want, but your willful ignorance that a break away could in fact be a real thing is... odd. There are lots of people talking about this.
A break away would kill ratings and doom college football. Sports bloggers write about anything that gets clicks regardless of facts just look at the pac 12 coverage. Last year they were blogging about the inevitable Big12 demise. Then it was that Big12 teams were going to the big ten. So yeah, clickbait
Only talk about football there. What happens if the rest of the schools say it's all or nothing. If you break away for football, you're not eligible for the rest of the sports. Can other sports survive with only 32 teams playing each other?
The only catch there is you can’t have an odd number of teams and an odd number of conference games. I think they definitely prefer 9 conference games, but I don’t know if it’s a dealbreaker.
That is a very valid point, I’m sure the number of conference games is already locked into the media deal so probably forced to have an even number. Don’t think of that one, good shout
Isn't that truth according to @FriendlySpartan, that's what he's been saying after it happened. Before that he was saying the B1G wouldn't be taking Pac schools. Are there any unbiased sources to substantiate that?
This makes me wonder what would have the Big12 media deal have garnered if OuT would of stayed and the conference had added only BYU and UC.
So, I’m curious, in the unlikely event UCLA is blocked and the B10 desires to go to 16 to maintain 9 conference games, who do you think the Big 10 would take? To me, it wouldn’t make sense to solely take Washington without an Oregon or Stanford. Washington really doesn’t provide a travel partner for USC other than being in the same time zone. Both would be on an island.
No idea, this is the first I've heard of it. If it happened I don't know how everyone involved wouldn't have seen through it as a bluff, there's zero chance USC or UCLA would have ever joined the SEC.
The budget for ISU has always been a lot less than Iowa's, the size of the gap really does not matter as long as the Big 10 does not use the extra money for NIL or to increase the number of scholarships each school offers. There is only so much physical building any of these schools can do, and Iowa has updated their stadium about as much as the space allows, and they will never leave their current stadium and build a new one.
Sure they can build a new basketball arena with the money, increase the amount they spend on the minor sports, or even offer more sports, but none of that will matter to football. It just means higher pay for coaches and larger buyouts when they fire a coach.
I honestly don’t know. Washington makes an incredible amount of sense but doesn’t have the brand UCLA does. I could really see Stanford but honestly haven’t given it much thought since I really doubt UCLA gets blocked.
Ok so this doesn’t say the SEC but this is a quote from SI
“For the Big Ten, it was an easy decision. Much like Texas and Oklahoma, USC and UCLA approached the Big Ten with a message: They were planning to leave the Pac-12 and wanted to know whether the league was interested in accepting them.
“You have to be a moron to not think about it,” a Big Ten source says. “They would have gone somewhere else if we said no.”
“For the Big Ten, it was an easy decision. Much like Texas and Oklahoma, USC and UCLA approached the Big Ten with a message: They were planning to leave the Pac-12 and wanted to know whether the league was interested in accepting them.
“You have to be a moron to not think about it,” a Big Ten source says. “They would have gone somewhere else if we said no.”
You can think that. I don't. These are elite academic schools, there's no way faculty, alumni or donors would've been on board with the SEC, which aside from Vandy and maybe a few others would've been an academic and cultural cesspool for SoCal bluebloods.
I don’t disagree with that assessment at all but if they approach and say they are leaving the PAC you have to take them seriously. There really wasn’t another landing spot that made sense even if joining the SEC is counter intuitive to a lot of what they stand for.
They were in a conference with Oregon State and the Arizona schools and UCLA’s AD was running massive deficits.
Yeah I don't even think an ultimatum would've been necessary. As your earlier post mentioned the B1G rep saying that when USC/UCLA call about joining you have to listen. Of course they're a take, right then and there. My wife has cousins who are USC grads/donors and they're cool with joining the B1G but at first were thrown just by the cultural fit of west coast and midwest. I watch Finebaum's show on SEC Network from time to time and hear those call in viewers... picturing those guys in the same conference as the SoCal snobs is just kind of impossible.
In my CFB Lifetime, USC has played home and homes with Alabama (twice), Auburn, Florida, L.S.U., Tennessee and Arkansas. Me thinks the Trojans would have liked playing in the S.E.C. just fine!
